Yale’s Art Gallery, Expanded, Reopens

In a hubbub of bright color and clangorous geometry, Stuart Davis’s late-’50s masterpiece “Combination Concrete #2” tells you everything you need to know about the recent reopening of the Yale University Art Gallery. “NEW!” it bellows in big block letters. “GO SLOW.”

The painting, along with more than 1,000 other recent acquisitions and some 3,000 older items from the gallery’s permanent collection of 200,000 works, is newly installed in renovated digs that have almost doubled the size of the museum, stretching its exhibition space across three buildings and adding a rooftop aerie and outdoor sculpture terrace for temporary exhibitions.

“Go slow” is good advice, since the artworks now on view come from every corner of the globe and span thousands of years of civilization. Shimmering textiles from Indonesia, inlaid floors from ancient Rome and jewel-like miniature portraits from colonial America join the art world’s marquee names —

Monet, van Gogh and Picasso, among others — in reconstructed galleries strung along one and a half blocks of Chapel Street. Works from 11 curatorial departments, including new displays of photographs and coins, two period rooms, and art from Africa and Asia, are connected by airy spaces that reveal striking views of the Yale campus on one side and the streets of New Haven on the other.

The expansion and renovation, 14 years in the making, unites the 1953 museum building by Louis Kahn, the 1928 Old Yale Art Gallery and the 1866 Street Hall into a single treasure chest. The cost was $135 million; admission remains free.